Archive for April, 2012

A more traditionally-styled collage. I think I started this collage hobby by trying to say too much, and it mostly ended up convoluted or cheesy. So I’m going simpler, with a style that’s more common, as found on various blogs. This took me only an hour to complete, compared to my older collages, that took anywhere between 4 and 8 hours.

The tragedy of being “farmed” and modeled under society’s mold, holding us back from what we could become if we were born truly free. We are all born as diamonds in the rough, but most die as black carbon.

Title:“A Dozen Newborns”
License: Creative Commons BY 3.0/US. Click for a larger, printable version. PNG version available on request.

The commercialization of the Olympic Games in a society that endorses enjoyment and consumption, with the professional athletes willing to do anything in their power to deliver. The Olympic spirit serves as nothing more but an excuse.

My first collage artwork ever, is done. Took about 8 hours of work in Photoshop, learned a lot in the meantime. My first collage subject is about the philosopher and my favorite indie artist, John Maus, and his need to “appear”. More explanation about the subject here.

I’m making an 180 degree turn, and getting myself into collage art. I decided that a couple of days ago. Funny thing is, for most of my life I hated collages, I found them to be some kind of art-cheating. But after seeing the works of Julien Pacaud and Jeffrey Meyer, I’m convinced that collage art is one of the coolest, versatile mediums out there. I started following the tag “collage” at TumblR lately too, and there are more updates for it than any other type of art right now. Hipster times…

The kind of collage I want to do is inspired by the two artists I mention above, but I want to show more contemporary elements in the composition. Collage artists are mostly using very old, usually copyright-free photographs, and this creates a fashionable, surrealistic world of nostalgia. But I feel that by not using more modern items (e.g. TVs, cellphones, modern cars etc) there’s an inevitable restriction in the work. Sure, the actual element used in an artistic work doesn’t have to be a factual representation of the object, but by only using old objects, a constrain arises in the spectrum of influence and interpretation. At least that’s my take on it, and I hope to do something about it.

In order to use modern objects I’d have to either pay for stock photography (no money for that though), or use pictures from FlickR. Unfortunately, Creative Commons-licensed pictures are not that high in numbers in order to create the best collage possible, so I might have to use copyrighted images too. Credits will be given for each picture used, the resulted PSD file will be offered as “open source” for educational purposes, and a tutorial will be written too for new, aspiring artists (update: tutorial is here). My works will be generally licensed under the CC-BY-SA-NC license (unless all elements are coming from CC-BY images, in which case my work will be CC-BY too), and at least for the collages using copyrighted elements, I won’t use commercially. With these precautions, I believe my work will fall under the “Fair Use” clause.

I wrote it before, and I will write it once more: The (proper) dairy is my No1 point of disagreement with mainline Paleo, with lentils being the No2. Lentils have too much iron, manganese, and folate, nutrients that are sorely missed when going too-low carb. They are essentially the best kinds of legumes in terms of nutrition. Unfortunately, they also have a lot of anti-nutrients: loads of lectins, to be exact.

In the olden days, beans would only be eaten while they’ve been previously fermented (soy too). But in the fast-pacing modern days we live in, convenience rules, so people stopped fermenting foods. According to an experiment carried out by researchers, a 24 to 36 hours fermentation of lentils gets rid of most of the lectins! At the end of the fermentation, the lectins and anti-nutrients surviving are not more than the ones found on a carrot or spinach. So in my opinion, Paleo fanatics who are adamant about the no-legumes rule, need to ease up. Just like with dairy, there are exceptions to the rule.

1. Place in a bowl, and add double the amount of water than that of lentils. The water must be slightly warm, around 30 C. For this type of fermentation, any kind of water will do, but filtered is best.

2. Add 1 tablespoon of raw vinegar, or the juice of a small lemon into the water. Stir, and cover (but not air-tight).

1. Place in a bowl, and add double the amount of water than that of lentils. The water must be slightly warm, but no more than 25-30 C. For this type of fermentation, non-tap water must be used. Use either filtered, or bottled water. The good bacteria we will use to ferment, can’t survive on tap water.